Scour Monitoring Technology Implementation

Thursday, February 6, 2014 - 3:30pm

About the Event

Bridge scour is the hydraulic-induced erosion of river bed material from around bridge foundations. It can result in the structural weakening or even catastrophic failure of the bridge. State transportation personnel currently use portable monitoring devices to measure and monitor scour during high-risk flooding events. This manual monitoring method is difficult, expensive, and dangerous because of the high-velocity flows associated with extreme flood events.

This seminar provided a summary of ongoing research at the University of Minnesota that is examining the performance of two fixed scour monitoring systems installed on two scour-critical bridges as an alternative to the manual method. The purpose of the research is to field test and document the installation and performance of commercially available fixed scour monitoring systems in Minnesota over a three-year period.

Watch video

Speaker(s)

Jeff Marr is the associate director of engineering and facilities at the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL), where he oversees the applied research team. Marr's research interests include water hydraulics, river engineering and restoration, sediment transport dynamics, and wind engineering.